Bhaichung Bhutia opposes "very dangerous" Citizenship Bill

Guwahati, December 5, 2019:

Soccer superstar and former Indian team Captain Bhaichung Bhutia is the latest personality to have raised concerns about the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Bill.

Terming the Bill as "very dangerous", the founder of the 'Hamro Sikkim Party' opined that the Bill could also negatively affect his home state, Sikkim.

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Raising apprehensions against the Bill, Bhaichung said that since the Northeast is close to Bangladesh and there are a lot of issues in Bengal and other Northeast states, the Bill could affect Sikkim in the long run.

Bhaichung also called upon the Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (SKM) Government in the state, currently aligned with the BJP party, to oppose the Bill tooth-and-nail.

Although protests against the Bill are mainly being carried out in the Northeast, it has attracted criticisms from other regions of the nation as well. On Wednesday, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has also slammed the "unconstitutional" Bill, and undermines the ‘fundamental tenets’ of the Indian Constitution.

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“Ours is a country for everybody and everybody, irrespective of religion, has equal rights in this country, and the Constitution that they wrote reflected that. Today, this Bill undermines this fundamental tenet of the Constitution,” the Congress leader said.

Bhaichung and Tharoor’s comments have come after the Union Cabinet had cleared the controversial Bill that seeks to grant citizenship to non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan facing persecution.

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